Sucks up $4bn in Q2 alone

Stats from analyst house IDC show that the Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) server revenues are growing even as fewer units are shipped.

HPE led in Europe by market share and revenue, though Dell EMC's 54 per cent year-on-year growth is closing the gap. ODM direct sales were third by revenue and market share, accounting for 10 per cent of the market.

"ODM growth has been driven by data centre buildout of several hyperscale public cloud providers – AWS, Microsoft, Google – in Western Europe," said Kamil Gregor, IDC's senior research analyst for Western Europe. "This growth has slowed down somewhat in recent quarters. France is the major exception, with both AWS and Microsoft opening new data centres around Paris and Marseille."

Overall, IDC reckoned the market was worth $4.01bn for the second quarter of 2018 alone.

In Germany and the UK, volumes shrank but revenues grew – respectively, a 14 per cent decline and an 8.7 per cent decline in shipments. Germany boosted revenues by a quarter with the UK posting a 29.9 per cent increase in revenues for the quarter.

In contrast, Spain saw revenues shrink compared to last year, in IDC's words "due to a major multinode deal in 2Q17 that significantly impacted the country's total spend".

Overall the picture of shrinking shipments and embiggening revenues was mirrored across the Middle East and Africa as well as Western, Central and Eastern Europe. ®